Part 51 (1/2)

The first bar was awful, but Anna had always insisted on hav ing three bars as a standard before the song part of the spell began, and that foresight once again proved helpful, since, by the time she began the spell proper, the players were together.

Silence in death, silence in fear, the sentries who watch for us to near....

A dozen blue-white spears of flame flashed across the sky, even before Anna's last words. She didn't wait to see if the effect was as she'd hoped. Either way, they needed to ride forward to enable her to use sorcery.

”Mount up,” Anna ordered, taking Farinelli's reins and climbing into the saddle, urging the gelding onward.

”Forward!” Hanfor's command conveyed urgency despite the low voice in which he had issued it.

The Regent couldn't even tell exactly when they pa.s.sed where the picket posts or the sentries had been beyond that except that she could sense... something. . .

looming ahead. The feel of so many armsmen? The presence of Darksong sorcery?

”See... there are the low cookfires-the red glow,” said Kinor from beside Anna.

She almost started in her saddle; in the darkness and her self-absorption, she'd forgotten that the young man had been riding beside her. She thought she saw figures moving before the campfires, although they were still a good quarter dek away.

”We need to hurry,” Anna told Liende and Hanfor as she swung out of the saddle.

She still had to hold on to the saddle rim for a moment to steady herself in the gloom. Handing Farinelli's reins to Kinor and stepping forward, she cleared her throat once, and then again.

Behind her, as each player dismounted, a lancer eased up and took the reins of that player's mount.”Players into position,” whispered Liende. ”One note...tune... now!”

The single note wavered into the darkness, then strengthened. ”The long flame song, as soon as you can,” ordered Anna.

”The long flame song, on my mark.” Liende's dim figure moved closer to Anna.

”When you are ready, Regent”

Anna cleared her throat, facing toward the dull mound that was the hill where Rabyn's camp lay. ”Now.”

”On my mark... mark!”

Anna concentrated on the music and called up the words.

Turn to fire, turn to flame all Nesereans who revere Rabyn's name, turn to ashes, turn to dust...

...bring down the Prophet with that flame, So none will e'er recall his name.

The sorceress found herself breathing heavily after the last notes died away.

For a long moment, the night was hushed, totally silent.

The faintest s.h.i.+mmer of redness flowed from the star-speckled skies. Then the unseen chords of harmony vibrated through the cool air, chords felt only by a handful of people, Anna knew-mostly the players and those sensitive to sorcery.

Another timeless instant of silence followed. Abruptly, a single set of drumbeats echoed into the night, just as arrows of white-hot flame cascaded from high overhead, down across the Neserean campsite, but near Rabyn's tent the arrows veered into a pyramid-leaving the tent and the drums untouched.

”Bowmen, stand ready with shafts?” ordered Hanfor.

”He's got his own sorcery,” Kinor said.

Great! Anna tried to think. What could counter that Darksong sorcery?

The arrows of flame continued to fall across the upper part of the Neserean camp' and the invisible pyramid was illuminated in flame, but those flames fell away from the tent, whose blue and cream panels were revealed by the flow of flames.

The thunder of a single drum continued to boom into the darkness. A second, deeper tone, joined the first, then a third, and the darkness flashed with sparks of light, as glowing black s.h.i.+eldlike globules rose from the Prophet's tent. Each s.h.i.+eld smothered an arrow of flame, and both dark and light points of sorcery vanished, casting an eerie flickering of dark and light across the open s.p.a.ce and the trees, erratically illuminating the hill behind the camp.

Yells and screams rose from the camps, and some of those screams were not from men, but from their mounts. Anna winced.

From the south, farther from the sorceress, Anna could hear orders being shouted. Before long, the Mansuurans would be ready to counterattack.

Waves of pressure, like sounds that had taken on the force of a slow-moving wind, began to press at her. Her ears felt as though she were far, farunderwater, slowly being crushed. She could feel something like static electricity crawling along her arms.

You've got to come up with another spell-quickly. But what? Rabyn's triple-toned Darksong was blocking her flame arrows, and the darkness was creeping away from the tent toward her, with the increasingly stronger rhythm and volume of the Darksong drums.

Think! You've got to do something.

Anna shook her head against the pressure that enfolded her, that slowed her thoughts. She had a plan. She had spells. What are they? Where are they?

Her head throbbed, and her eyes blurred.

88.

NORTH OF FUSSEN, DEFALK.

A single unheard note wakes Rabyn, and he stumbles from his silk coverlet onto the smooth wool of the carpet that covers the ground. It is not dawn, and the cookfires should still be low coals for gla.s.ses yet, but he can sense an unseen chord nearing the tent, like a slow arrow frozen within the scope of a fraction of a gla.s.s.

He stiffens, then yanks on trousers alone and hastens to the front of the tent.

Outside, the night remains dark. Rabyn shakes his head and steps out and around a lone Prophet's Guard.

”Sire?”

”Shut up!” His eyes traverse the darkness. A torch? Something? ”Nubara! Get the drummers!” Rabyn runs barefooted toward the drums behind the tent. ”Fools!

You're all fools.” He reaches the first of the man-high ma.s.sive drums and pulls off the oiled cloth protecting it. ”'She won't attack so soon, honored Prophet'... fools!”

Nubara appears with his cloak wrapped over his bare chest as Rabyn yanks the oiled cloths off the second drum, and then the third. ”Rabyn! What are you doing? Why-” A racking cough chokes off the remainder of his hoa.r.s.e-shouted question.

”The b.i.t.c.h sorceress! You fools! You're all fools!” The young Prophet turns to the bare-chested and black-haired youth barely older than the Prophet himself and thrusts the carved wooden mallets into the drummer's hands. ”The first rhythm! Now!”

Rabyn takes the second set of mallets in his own hand and climbs onto the high stool by the second drum. ”Follow me!”

The first uneven rumbling rhythm rolls slowly into the darkness, creating an initial cacophony that quickly smooths into a more even flow, just as a pattering or hissing that calls up rain rains down from above the tent, but the air is cool and dry, not damp.